4K TV Shipments Are Ramping Up Much Faster Than HD TV Did In The Past

BII
4K Ultra HD, or 4K for simplicity's sake, is the new TV standard for picture quality. 4K has four times the pixel density of standard HD.

Analysts debate whether picture quality is really that much improved with 4K, but consumer uptake is accelerating, because average selling prices of existing 4K sets have dropped a great deal and will drop much further. Electronics giants are marketing 4K aggressively, as they did in connection with the recent soccer World Cup.

We expect that 4K Ultra HD-capable TVs will be in more than half of North American households in the next 10 years. That's a faster adoption curve than what we saw with HDTV.

Prices for 4K TVs are falling fast, dropping by about 85% worldwide in just two years. We compare prices across regions (China has the most accessible price points), and examine how falling prices will fuel rapid 4K adoption.

Already, data from IHS finds that 4K TV shipments reached over one million per month in March and should top 15.2 million for the full year. The average selling price for 4K-capable televisions has dropped 86% worldwide in just two years, falling from $7,851 in 2012 to $1,120 in 2014.